Car Design Review X: Pontus Fontaeus, GAC

Our Advanced Design Center in Costa Mesa, California, opened in 2018 when GAC was planning to enter the North American market. Later, when the company announced it was delaying those plans, we had to ask ourselves, how do we stay relevant? We had to weave our own safety net and show that our studio was an asset, and I’m proud to say that we have done just that. This was the first advanced studio overseas and thanks in part to our success, we later expanded to Milan and are now going much more into Europe.

These satellite studios have made a lot of impact on the Chinese automotive landscape. We’ve made a big effort to build a beautiful, creative space here for the team. We work on production cars as well as concept cars and do exterior design, interior design, digital modelling and studio engineering. We also have user experience and user interface UX/UI design and branding teams. It’s very important to me to have this relationship with our head of design, Fan Zhang, where we are very fair, humble, and work hand-in-hand.

Of course, we compete for projects with other GAC studios — make no mistake, for our studio to survive, we have to perform — but we’re collaborative when called for. For example, with the EN0.146 concept car shown in 2019, we did the exterior, name, roof spider, and flanges, while the Shanghai studio was responsible for the interior, and colour, materials and finish (CMF) design and the project management came from Guangzhou. And we’ve been doing it since too, taking on different design roles each time.

Having come from brands like Audi and Volvo, perhaps the biggest challenge is that GAC doesn’t have heritage or brand identifiers. Things move so quickly in China and they always want to see new things. But this also keeps things exciting. We work in probably the most interesting and fascinating automotive landscape in the world right now. In the earlier days you saw a lot of Chinese brands copying European and American designs and it was much harder as an outsider to convince them to trust their taste and aesthetics. Now there is an absolute confidence to stay with what they like, rather than “westernise” everything.

At the moment I find UX/UI particularly important. This interaction between man and machine is absolutely fundamental. I like to say that UX/UI is the gemstone, the interior is the ring holder, and the exterior is the Tiffany box. What that means is that everything has to be beautiful, but we also have to ask ourselves why we are doing these cars. Think about approaching an attractive person. If you start to have a conversation and there’s ‘no-one home’, it’s kind of like having a beautiful car with a stupid system. I think that especially in China, it’s so important to have the technology right, maybe more so than for any other country.

Culture-wise, we are a government-owned Chinese car company, but it doesn’t really feel like that. Our work ambience is calm and feels much more down-to-earth and friendly. I think the success of our studio is based around communication and this great interaction of ideas. Fan and I might disagree sometimes, but I can be straight with him and he can be straight with me. We still respect each other. I try to be as open with my own boss as I am with my team, as long as it’s constructive and focused on better products.

It’s the hardest thing to be a manager of a lot of creative wild people with their egos and expectations and frustrations and ambitions. It’s not like you’re a manager for McDonald’s or an insurance company. Sometimes we all make wrong decisions, but as long as you take a decision you can re-route. The worst thing is to take no decision and don’t know what you’re aiming for. We are frustrated as hell sometimes, but I say there’s no successful electric circuit without resistance.

Looking ahead, I’m focused on the big picture. I want GAC to go global and for us to be successful. Like America isn’t just Hollywood Boulevard, China is also so much more than people might think. So I want us to be able to build up an image and perception of China globally. Why do people drive German cars? Because they know Germans are damn good engineers. It’s the same thing if you have French food, or wear a Swiss watch. China has to show what they are good at.

When I joined Hyundai-Kia in 2004, people questioned what I was doing. But no-one would question anyone for joining that successful Group today. Now we eat Korean food, watch Squid Game and listen to K-pop. There’s no doubt there is a culture. What’s important to me is that we build up our studios abroad and enter the North American market. I want GAC to have street cred and I want our team make that dream happen.